Tuesday, 7 September 2010

Maxwell Gray ... where London stood

I encountered an intriguing snippet of information that combines two of my ongoing minor fixations: the works of Maxwell Gray (Mary Gleed Tuttiett), and spotting ruined Londons in fiction. Distinctly out of character with the themes of her previous works, one of the stories in her last book, the 1923 anthology A Bit of Blue Stone, features a post-apocalyptic London.

"The Crash" ... looks far into the future and pictures England sunk again in primitive existence as the result of a terrible revolution; "the battered and half-ruined Palace of Westminster" is almost the only relic of today.

- The Times Literary Supplement, May 24, 1923

I shall have to find this.

Addendum: I just got the book, and have commented. The story is actually called After the Crash.